The musician also covers her issues with the press, influences, and visions for the future of live music in a new interview
Grimes has had a busy few months, to say the least, with the release of her newest album, Miss Anthropocene, a new BBC Radio 1 residency, and of course the birth of her first child with Elon Musk.
The musician has still managed to find time for a new interview though, in which she covers topics from the future of live music to her divisive Boiler Room set in 2013 – or “the Boiler Room incident”, as she refers to it – which saw her “troll” the audience with hits from the likes of Mariah Carey and Vengaboys.
“I don’t necessarily have a lot of dignity as a DJ,” she adds, speaking to Resident Advisor about the set (which, despite a petition, has never been officially released). “I actually do love snobbery in dance music, but I also like trolling it. Some of the maddest people have ever been at me is, like, playing pop music in the wrong club.”
The interview also sees Grimes cover her conflict with the press. “I don’t know if it’s a gendered thing, or just that the press is primed to go for controversy,” she says. “But I feel like I’m constantly fighting this battle against a few weird narratives.”
On a more positive note, Grimes gets to express her love for Burial, one of her “all-time favourite artists”, and cites the elusive London producer among artists she considers herself a descendent of (Aphex Twin and Animal Collective included). Incidentally, her baby’s name, X Æ A-12, also contains a reference to Burial’s song “Archangel”.
Nightcore also gets a namecheck, which isn’t too surprising given her uptempo, pitch-shifted remix of “We Appreciate Power”, dropped back in early 2019. In fact, Grimes apparently has a whole nightcore album already made, saying: “I keep being like, ‘would it be a huge problem if I released a nightcore album?’” (No, is the answer.)
Speaking more generally about the future of music – and the future in general – Grimes also weighs in on sampling (good), facetuning and digital avatars (maybe good, maybe not), and the virtual concerts that have been cropping up since coronavirus measures shut down IRL venues.
“Will concerts change over to this?” she says. “I doubt it. But also the coronavirus thing is really exposing the fragility of civilisation. Maybe gatherings in the way that we’ve been doing them could become obsolete. That’s not totally out of the question.”
Referencing the success of virtual pop princess Hatsune Miku, Grimes adds: “I think all that stuff, in the next ten or fifteen years, will become more common and get better. The thing with technology is it always gets better. Things that seem crazy can, ten years later, become incredible, and normal.”
Listen to the Grimes’s full interview below.